Aftermath
by LoganAlpha30
Summary: Just a little idea that popped into my head about Ron and Hermione in the common room after the last battle. Hope you all like it. Sorry for the long rant in the Author's Note. R/Hr.


**AFTERMATH**

 **Author's Note: I don't own any of the characters, as if I did then Ron/Hermione would have started far earlier.**

Hogwarts-Gryffindor Common Room

Everything hurt, literally every part of him hurt. He couldn't discern any particular injury from any other, he just knew that seemingly every square inch of him hurt. He had no earthly idea as to where he had come by any of the injuries that he could see, let alone those hidden beneath his clothes, which were torn, dirty, and splattered with mud and blood and who knows what else. He tried not to think of whom some of the blood had come from, apart from knowing that some of it was his own and some of it was more than likely Harry and Hermione's, as the nagging voice in the back of his head reminded him that some of it was more than likely Fred's. He had tried his very best to not think of his lost brother because he knew that if he did he would probably lose it completely. He still couldn't think about his older brother without feelings his eyes water and his heart clench painfully in his chest.

He hoped that the feeling would ease over time but he was scared of thinking what it could mean if it did. He had followed along after Hermione, holding her hand in his, without really taking in what anyone was saying to them or who had even spoken. All that he could do was concentrate on how surprisingly soft it was given what she and they had just gone through. Her smile seemed to somehow give him physical strength and pushed his pain from loss and guilt at still being alive down so that he could focus. He only vaguely heard her saying something about having to check on the house elves before he was alone again. It seemed like seconds later but he was just about to try to get back up to his feet and head off towards bed when the portrait swung open and she stepped inside. She looked lost in her own little world and so it took her a couple of steps before she noticed him, a look of sincere relief and happiness on her face.

"Thought you were going to get cleaned up," Hermione declared with a slightly confused and concerned frown as she stopped a few feet in front of him and wiped away a few tears with the back of her hand.

"I was, this is as far as I got before I started to think…," Ron shrugged mournfully as he sniffled back a few fresh tears and leaned back in his seat, carefully studying every inch of her, fully taking in the new tears and how even more worn and weary she appeared.

"I'm glad then, that you stopped before you hurt yourself," Hermione tried to joke, though she seemed to guess that he wouldn't get the joke and felt bad about it halfway through it, as she walked over and stood beside him with a reassuring hand on his shoulder.

"What…," Ron asked softly with a totally lost expression as he sat up a bit straighter in his seat and reached up and laid a hand over hers before she went on.

"Never mind, go on," Hermione interjected quickly with what started out as a tired laugh before she couldn't help but yawn widely as she sat down on the couch next to him so that they could sit facing each other.

"Er…okay, it's just that I started thinking about…what now, for the last seven years we've done nothing but worry about what's next, there's always been someone out there that's wanted to kill Harry…and us…and now…," Ron set his jaw a bit at first as he momentarily struggled to find the right words to say to her without letting his composure slip as he took her hands in his and looked up into her dirty and tear streaked face.

"Now that it's all over where do we go from here…yeah, I was thinking the same thing pretty much," Hermione's reply slowly reached Ron's ears as she looked almost lost in thought as she spoke the words before she snapped her attention back to his face and tried to smile as best she could.

"You're probably going to come back here…Hogwarts…when they fix it back up and all, finish school," Ron commented softly with a half-hearted look around the common room, taking in every difference between how it was now and how it was when he had last seen it from the cracks in the walls to the chairs and tables overturned all around him.

"Maybe…I'm not sure if it'll ever feel proper again, to many bad memories," Hermione replied through a rather sullen mumble as her head tilted down until her chin came to rest on her chest and her shoulders visibly slumped before she regained her composure as Ron gave her hands a supportive squeeze.

"I know what you mean, then again I just can't see you not finishing your schooling and all, just doesn't sound like you, the Hermione that I know and love would never leave her schoolwork unfinished…can you" Ron hoped to lightly argue back with a forced laugh before his expression grew far more serious as the two looked deeply into each other's eyes and both knew that his words were true. Rather than immediately say something back she thought for a few moments before opening her mouth and looked ready to speak. But a few seconds later she shut her mouth and slowly shook her head.

"N…no, but you and Harry probably aren't coming back…I'm not sure that I can…that I want to be alone for all of those months," Hermione finally managed to gather enough breath to speak plainly and clearly as she returned the squeeze of her hands before acknowledging a small but persistent uncertainty in the back of her mind.

"We'd have the holidays…and you wouldn't be alone, Ginny would be there…," Ron offered up with a forced tone of optimism in his words as he desperately tried to smile but soon found it impossible and had to grit his teeth to keep from tearing up.

"True…however she's not the Weasley that I'd want by my side," Hermione remarked with the corners of her lips starting to curl upwards as she leaned forward towards Ron, silently hoping that he would copy her so that they could kiss again, but he didn't seem to have gotten the memo as he sat as still as a stone in his seat.

"Ya mean George…or…or maybe Charlie," Ron pouted while looking as sullen as he'd ever looked as he solemnly stared off into space before his muscles tensed up just as Hermione opened her mouth to speak.

"WHAT…RON…really, don't make me hex you again," Hermione snapped angrily as she balled her hands up into fists and started to reach for her wand before she realized that Ron had been joking all along, as bad as the joke was, and she had to let out a shaky breath to try and calm herself, pulling her hands fully out of his grasp at the end.

"Kidding…kidding, sorry…just wanted to see you smile again," Ron joked as fast as he could get his lips to move as he threw his hands up in self-defense as he hoped that Hermione wasn't really going to hex him but didn't put it past her as he felt that if she did he'd have deserved it.

"Mission accomplished then I'd wager," Hermione shot back angrily at first before her anger abated and she couldn't help but smile at Ron's bit of stupidity all for her benefit before he cut across her words and started back up again.

"Definitely, then again now I'm not really sure what I want to do, I thought I wanted to be an auror ya know…with Harry…but if it's anything like all that time in the tent then…I think I might pass," Ron admitted with a slightly embarrassed look to him and his ears turning red before he hesitantly raised his gaze up to look her in the eye so that he could see her reaction, hoping for a good one full of understanding and not one of shock and anger.

"But I thought that you and Harry had made plans to enter the auror department together," Hermione wondered with an impatient frown as she set her hands down onto the top of Ron's in his lap and looked nervously at him, fearing the worst.

"We had, but that feels like a lifetime ago, but you probably should graduate and all…you'd get to spend more time in the library," Ron openly replied without trying to hide the truth as he stared very intently right at a small scratch on Hermione's left shoulder and did not budge an inch until he came up with another bad joke and turned his head to look at her to see if she'd smile again.

"Oh I don't know, I think I'm done with the library for a while…what," Hermione softly bemoaned back with a deep sigh and rolling of her eyes as her shoulders slumped noticeably and she suddenly looked very tired and defeated.

"You sure you're okay, you're not coming down with something are you…maybe I should take you up to see Madam Pomfrey," Ron exclaimed with a visibly nervous and scared look in his eyes and tone to his words as he slid a hand free and held the back of his hand up to her forehead, checking to see for himself if perhaps she had come down with something.

"I'm fine Ron…it's…it's just that after everything we've been through I want some time…time to…decompress…relax, find my parents…Fred…," Hermione snapped back sharply at first in a slight huff before her countenance softened considerably as she grabbed his hand on her forehead by the wrist and pulled it back down onto her lap, though she kept her grip and didn't let go.

"I still can't believe it…just seems like a nightmare…except I'm wide awake," Ron said in return in an almost whisper as he once again found it impossible to look Hermione in the eye as he could feel the tears starting to fill his eyes, though his spirits were buoyed by Hermione tightening her grip on his wrist with one hand while her other found his cheek.

"Mostly, but yeah…I know what you mean, I still can't believe that they're all gone…Teddy…poor Teddy Lupin…having to grow up without his parents, it's…it's Harry all over again," Hermione replied with a very solemn look in her eyes before her dirty and tear streaked face got a little cleaner with several more tears sliding down her cheeks as she tried to keep from going to pieces at how history seemed to be repeating itself.

"Not really, Teddy won't have any dark lord haunting him for his entire life, and he'll have plenty of people that knew his parents well so we'll be able to help him along the way and answer almost all of his questions…except the big ones, no big dark secrets that anybody wants to keep buried," Ron answered optimistically with a badly done hopeful smile as he pulled Hermione into a tight embrace and soon began to gently rub small circles on her back with his left hand in the hopes that it would help to calm her down a bit.

"Maybe…but Ron…we should stop, I don't think that I can go on much longer if I don't get some sleep…and you look like you're about to drop as well," Hermione sniffled after several moments of the two locked in a comforting and warm embrace for both as she very reluctantly pulled away from Ron so that her words would not be muffled up against him before she stood up and kept a hand on his shoulder, trying not to yawn.

"Huh…oh…yeah," Ron snickered with a tired laugh that he used to try and cover up a yawn as he allowed Hermione to pull him up to his feet with more than a fair amount of his help before they parted painfully and started off towards their respective dorms. He noticed that she stopped with her hand almost touching the doorknob and thought it strange. "Something wrong?"

"Do…do you think that I could use your bath…the girls dorm might not have been searched yet…might not be safe," Hermione wondered softly with a very nervous and anxious look in her eyes and slight wavering in her voice as she answered Ron with a quick look before he nodded his agreement. "Thank You." They hurried up the stairs and Ron took a seat on the edge of what had been his bed, leaning heavily on the corner post to keep himself from falling over.

"I'll wait here, have fun," Ron quipped with a sly but very sleepy grin, as he was suddenly having a hard time keeping his eyes open through a rather large yawn as he watched Hermione head towards the door to the bathroom before she stopped at the doorway and turned back.

"Heh…no chance of that," Hermione replied while looking very worn and weary before she disappeared out of the room, leaving Ron to struggle to strip off his clothes alone, hoping that he had the strength for it and didn't pass out in the middle of doing it. It felt like seconds to Ron however he knew that it must have been longer as he felt a hand on his shoulder and jerked awake. "Ron…wake up, you fell asleep," Hermione said softly to him as the world slowly came back into clarity for him and he saw her standing in front of him looking freshly washed and ready for bed.

"What happened," Ron grumbled impatiently as he painfully straightened up in his seat and looked her over carefully from top to bottom, she looked like she'd been through hell as he knew that she had, but he was heartened to see that the fire in her eyes had not gone out as she brushed some hair back behind her ear.

"You fell asleep, I'm done so it's your turn, I laid out some clothes for you in there," Hermione explained slowly with a tired but relieved smile as she started to help him towards the bathroom before she stopped at the doorway, almost as if she was reluctant to let go of him.

"Thanks," Ron weakly mumbled, earning him a small smile, as he shuffled off into the bathroom leaving her to lean heavily on the doorframe and try to not fall asleep herself, at least not until he was done.

"Just don't fall asleep in there…otherwise I'd have to come in and save you…RON," Hermione called out loudly after him as she was suddenly having a very hard time keeping her eyes open before he gave her a quick smile and slipped into the bathroom. He threw himself into the bath as he was far too tired and worn out to bother taking it slow, as he guessed that if he had he would indeed have fallen asleep. The warm water felt really good but he knew that he had to press on. Afterwards he yanked his clothes on before he was even fully dry, though he really didn't care. He draped his shirt over his shoulder and made his way back towards the dorm room, yawning deeply.

"Hermione, I'm…bloody hell…," Ron commented softly with a weary laugh as he saw that she had apparently fallen asleep herself, sitting on the floor near the doorway to the bathroom with her head leaning up against the cold brick wall. With another yawn he softly shook her awake and helped her stand up.

"Huh…oh...Ron, good…you're done, I…I should," Hermione weakly mumbled with her eyes half opened as she heavily leaned on Ron for support before she seemed to smile at some silent joke as he started to lead her over towards the nearest bed.

"Sleep here tonight, neither one of us has it to get all the way to the girls dorm…besides…I can't get in there anyway, better stay here, plenty of beds," Ron told her softly with a tone of voice full of hope that he was trying not to let bleed through too much as he wasn't quite ready to let her go just yet before she plopped herself down onto the foot of the bed where Ron had fallen asleep earlier.

"Hmm…okay, plenty of beds," Hermione whispered softly with a content smile as she started to lean on the bedpost that Ron had fallen asleep against earlier, looking like she was exactly where she wanted to be and didn't want to move a muscle if she didn't absolutely have to.

"Plenty…yeah," Ron added under his breath as he felt very uneasy while looking around the room to see that his and Harry's old beds looked to be the only ones that hadn't suffered some sort of damage during the battle and he knew that Harry would need the other bed.

"What about Harry," Hermione suddenly exclaimed sleepily as she snapped herself back up to a seated position, making it sound as if she had just remembered that Harry wasn't with them.

"He can get his own bed, like I said, plenty of beds available," Ron replied through a shaky laugh before he had to yawn deeply and blink his eyes wildly to keep himself from falling asleep as the shampoo that Hermione had used in his hair was starting to make him really sleepy.

"I like this one," Hermione continued softly as she stared off into space and lightly patted spot on the bed right beside her and then turned her head to look up at Ron, almost as if she were telling him to sit down beside her.

"Me too, hope I haven't grown too much and don't fit anymore," Ron remarked with some genuine worry in his voice as he looked down at himself and then over at the bed and hoped that his feet wouldn't dangle off the end of it when he laid down.

"Maybe, you're not as small as you used to be," Hermione shot back with a soft but playful smirk as she gazed up at him with a warm but tired smile and held a hand out to him, hoping that he would take it and sit down next to her.

"Heh…I was never small…," Ron answered with a hearty laugh as he took her hand and sat down beside her, smiling inwardly at how his legs were long enough that even sitting on the bed he could reach the floor.

"I was, maybe now someone will find me beautiful," Hermione openly admitted as she thought about how big everything at Hogwarts had seemed her first year and how many of those things no longer seemed to be all that big at all to her anymore before she let slip more than she had intended to.

"You were always beautiful…," Ron replied before he could stop himself as he found himself to be too tired to be scared of what she might say back and indeed he was halfway through another rather large yawn before he realized what he'd actually said.

"Ron…," Hermione gasped out loud with a face as red as Ron's hair as she snapped back to being fully awake in the span of time it took for her mind to register what Ron had said and she couldn't figure out if he was being honest or had just spoken without thinking as usual.

"To me anyway," Ron mumbled as his face had become as red as his hair upon fully realizing what he had said and the look on Hermione's face before she cut in through her mountain of nerves.

"Even now," Hermione asked as she looked very fearfully hopeful with tears in her eyes as the pair could sit up no longer and together they unceremoniously flopped down onto the bed, with Hermione on top of him.

"Always," Ron answered through heavy eyelids as he wrapped his arms around Hermione and she leaned in close for a kiss, which was the last thing that either would remember about that night. Some minutes later Harry would slouch into the room and find them asleep together with her head on Ron's chest. With a soft chuckle he threw a blanket over them and barely made it to his own bed before sleep overtook him.

END OF CHAPTER

Author's Note: Thanks to everyone for reading this little short idea of mine. As always reviews are greatly appreciated. Still can't read any Harry and Hermione or Draco and Hermione stories as neither fit the characters or the books, the movies left a lot of Ron's best moments and some of the best Ron and Hermione moments out. That and the Weasley's in general got left out which would have made the Harry and Ginny pairing much more believable for those that only went to the movies as in the books there's buildup to their pairing and it doesn't come out of the blue. I could see both sides of the did Hermione actually kiss Krum in the fourth book. I could see Krum kissing her and her getting all flustered by it, though if we all remember whenever anyone praised Hermione she got all flustered whether it was a teacher or Ron or Harry. I never saw the two as actually dating in the book but more that Krum would go where he knew Hermione would be like the library and such.

I could also see Harry and Ginny thinking that they had kissed as it would be natural, though I get upset at Harry that he didn't tell Hermione the truth when she asked him what she was supposed to have done when Ron was dating Lavender. I just think that if in the sixth book Hermione was trying to make Ron mad about who she was or was not dating if she and Krum had truly been that close then she would have used him to make Ron mad as she already knew that it made him mad like it did in fifth year, before in sixth year when she seemed to call Ron a bad quidditch player, or at least hint that she saw him that way. Hermione would have gotten mad if she had known the reason though I think that she would have felt the same had she say had been told by Harry that Ron and Fleur had kissed in fourth year and then they had been exchanging letters through fifth year and if Fleur and Bill hadn't been dating and then engaged. It's funny in rereading the books there are times where Hermione will scold Ron about calling a teacher or someone else a certain name and then call a different person like Pansy or Umbridge something far worse by comparison or at least similar.

She also goes from almost mocking Hagrid and his class to spitting mad when anybody else makes fun of him. I think a great amount of the books gelling so well is because both Harry and Hermione were interested in a member of the Weasley family and not each other. The Weasley's gave Harry the loving family that he'd never known where he didn't have to do anything to get that love and they fully accepted Hermione into the wizarding world and treated her as an equal from the start. We also see as far back as the second book that Ron cares an awful lot about Hermione given his reaction to the two times that Draco wishes that Hermione had died instead of just being petrified. Not to mention that it was Ron and not Harry that figured out that Hermione had to be up to something in the third year to be taking so many classes, and I've seen people that only watched the movie think that Harry and Hermione never told Ron about the time turner, though it's clear in the book that Hermione did as Ron mentions it to her later on. The experience with the time turner to me would be one clue that I don't see Hermione becoming Minister of Magic, she'd try to do too much, often miss family events and such, and have to keep to many secrets.

Hermione hates lying to Ron and Harry and I don't think that she could do it on a daily basis. I've also seen some "Guest" reviewers erroneously state that Ron never apologized to Harry and Hermione in the seventh book after he came back, which is wrong because he did say that he was sorry, twice to Harry and he would have said it twice to Hermione separately but she interrupted him. Also clear from the seventh book to me is that the trio works better as a trio, they each contribute something vital. I also kind of wonder why Harry didn't try to explain things to Hermione, as he obviously knew what Ron had thought was going on before he left, unless it took the lockets attack on Ron to get him to figure it all out. Harry seems to have taken a fair amount for granted, he doesn't seem to figure out that Ron and Hermione like each other until almost the end of the books, and then when he tells Ron after the locket is destroyed he acts like he'd always known.

At times over the books it seems like Harry never acted on problems between the three of them that he was aware of until they directly affected him. I'll have at least a couple more Harry Potter stories to come, always wished that we would have seen Harry explaining everything to everybody that hadn't gone on the hunt with them, that Hermione would have found out what happened with the locket, that we could have seen Remus and Lupin's reactions to Snape's real reasons for hating James and such. To me James and Sirius were bullies and Sirius had his own version of things and believed that version until he died, that nothing that he had James had ever done to anyone really amounted to much and was shocked and confused as to why anybody that he and James bullied would ever want to do them any harm for that all years later. I think that once Ron and Hermione knew that they liked each other and only each other and that Voldemort was gone that things would go better for them, and that they wouldn't put off living their lives or wasting all of that time of not being together, they wouldn't then have rushed headlong into anything to me but if they say had started dating in their fourth year at the Yule Ball I wonder where they would have been by the time of Voldemort's death in the end of the seventh book.

That and I thought that they should have had more kids than two, not as many as Ron's parents but five total kids sounds good, a son first that would be a mix of the two, then twin daughters who were smart but more about their looks and such than Hermione really was, then Rose and Hugo. To do that Rowling would not have had to add much at all to the epilogue, and I just totally ignore the Cursed Child play. I also can't stand stories that start out with Ron and Hermione together and then have her fall for somebody else that start after Voldemort is dead as Ron is usually written terribly in them. Just on a side note I can't remember Harry ever being actually mad or angry at Ginny or Luna, unlike with Hermione. Sorry to everyone for the overly long rant but my mind gets worked up when I think about things too long. Thank You.


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